Brunch: Bacon and Egg Cupcakes

So a friend of mine posted this YouTube video last month on Facebook, and I totally wanted to try it.

But I needed to be home with enough time to make these.
Enter a snowy Saturday with no plans.  I made 4 of these in my muffin tins.  I estimated 1.5 pieces of bacon per cup, and used Penzey's Sunny Paris herb blend and Kraft Shredded Double Cheddar Cheese.

Souper Sunday: Italian Tortellini

I love Taste of Home magazine.  Their recipes, full of fat and flavour, always work, and are always easy.  I mean, who else but TOH will have a super simple brunch for 8 as a 2 page layout, followed on the next page with a request for recipes for squirrel? (Don't laugh, I've seen such a request in TOH)
I have a bunch of TOH compilations...Holiday, Cookies, and Soup to name a few.  Seeing as make soup most Sundays, this one makes sense.  The odd thing?  I've only made 2 recipes out of it, and it was to be removed from the shelves by April 28, 2008.  That means that I've probably owned this magazine almost as long as I've been married.  And I've only made 2 recipes.  This needs to change!
So I sat down and browsed until I found something interesting.  When I make soup, I want something easy, hearty and filling.  I was pretty sure this one would fit the bill.

Let Them Eat Cake: School Death Edition

Chocolate and Peanut Butter has to be one of my favourite flavour combinations.  From cups to milkshakes to brownies, I will try them all.  I know it's also a favourite of one of my favourite reads, Ms. Sizzle at Sizzle Says.  Seeing as she also likes to bake, I'm pretty sure she'd love this one if she's currently eating sugar.  Or refined carbs.  Heh...I looked at the nutritional notes for this cake and decided not to post them.  Don't think.  Just have a small piece and take the rest somewhere for others to help you eat the rest.  That's the beauty of cakes:  they're made to be shared.
I love making cakes.  I have made a lot of layer cakes in the past for work potlucks and the like.  Hence my rather large collection of cake recipes and magazines.  I found this in my Taste of Home Luscious Cakes magazine that was to be taken off the stands May 13, 2006.  Seeing as it's TOH, it was ridiculously simple.  Seeing as there's a cup of peanut butter in it, as well as peanut butter chips, I will never be able to take this to work with me.  Here's the recipe for Peanut Butter Crunch Cake:

I'm Not Sure This is Biggest Loser Material...

I subscribed to Martha Stewart's Everyday Food for about 5 years.  It was as this magazine piled up around my house that I decided that I needed to actually make things in the magazines that came in the mail and not merely admire the pretty pictures.  This is a recipe that I first made for J and I just after he moved to Canada.  At that point, I was still working on impressing him with my culinary skills.  It's amazing what 4 years of marriage will do for you.  The impressing my boy phase is gone.
I will tell you that I have a love/hate relationship with Martha's recipes.  Her baked goods are hit and miss.  I've made pancakes from EDF that were more dry, rubbery hockey pucks than things I wanted to waste perfectly good maple syrup on.  But her entrees and sides are usually winners, and there are many EDF entrees that are staples in our kitchen.  I make these maybe once a year.  It's hard to put that much fat in one dish and not somehow think that we should be eating a healthier version.  But these potatoes are so good.  I love goat cheese.
In honour of The Biggest Loser starting at work this week, I present a recipe that none of my work colleagues would currently eat, despite the fact that these are about the only sort of scalloped potatoes that I will eat.  If you make these, do not replace the cream with milk.  That verges on sacrilege.  They wouldn't be the same.  I think the idea is to not eat too much in one sitting.  From October 2006, I present to you Potatoes Gratin:

Meal Planning, January 15-21

We try really hard to plan to eat at home.  It's one of my ongoing resolutions.  J and I both like to eat (surprise, surprise), and we're not afraid to eat out.  But right now, frankly, it's a bit of a strain on the pocketbook.  I aim to cook and eat at home 5 nights per week.  Some weeks are more successful than others.  I would say 7 nights per week, but that doesn't happen. 
J's mom didn't cook on weekends.  My mom cooked every night.  While I like the concept of not cooking weekends, this is when there's more time for me to explore and experiment...as well as mire myself in experiments that I don't have time for normally.  So, J and I sit down every weekend, and talk about what we'd like to eat, what nights I won't be home or will be home late and so on.  It works for us. 
Here's what this week looks like:  I have guitar Wednesday, and won't be home until 7.  I'm out for a work dinner on Thursday.  So, we need S, M, T, W, and F.  Wednesday being leftovers.  Saturday's negotiable.

Sunday:  Tortellini Soup, rolls, butter and cheese (leftovers for lunch this week)
Monday: Steak Stirfry over rice (leftovers for lunch this week)
Tuesday: Baked Ham, Scalloped Potatoes and whatever vegetable is on sale this week
Wednesday: Leftovers from Tuesday
Thursday: J orders pizza.  I get banquet food
Friday:  Spaghetti and garlic bread...and wine!!!
Saturday:  ??

That sounds good.  Pictures and recipes to follow :)

Om, Nom, Nom...

I love the Kraft magazine.  Their food is easy, appetizing, and uses things that I often stock in my kitchen.  Even better, I'm still getting the magazine for free.  I haven't decided yet if I'm planning to continue with it when I'm sent a subscription form and I have to pay for it.  Argh.  Some of my favourite dishes come out of the Kraft magazine.  Many things that I make regularly.  But, I also cull back issues for things I missed.

Here's a gem from the Fall 2010 edition.  It was easy, and went from, "Oh my gosh, it's after 6:30 and I haven't started cooking!" to table at 7:10.

Shuffling off to Buffalo

So I've had a taste for all things Buffalo recently.  Pizza, wings, you name it and I've been willing to try it.  Some things are better than others.  But what I haven't been able to get out of my head is the soup I ate at the beginning of December.


Not far from my work is a meat shop, with a large, well attended hot lunch.  Sometimes when I forget my lunch, that's where I end up...usually grabbing a plain spicy chicken sandwich.  But early in December, I went in and they had Buffalo chicken soup on the menu.  So I tried it, and it was pretty good.  Too sweet for my tastes, but good.  Last week, I started thinking about making my own.


In looking for a recipe, I discovered a problem.  Most of the recipes out there use a base of Velveeta (bleh) or condensed cream of chicken soup (blargh).  I saw one from Better Homes and Gardens, but wasn't sure it was really what I wanted.  Then I found this on allrecipes.com:

And so it begins...

It's a little hard to explain why exactly I'm starting a second blog when I suck at keeping up with one.  But here we are, and I'm going to give it a shot.

Last year, A friend of mine gave me a hard time for going to McDonald's for dinner after going to the grocery store that afternoon for the week.  So I started posting pictures to Facebook of what I made...to prove that I did actually cook at home, and that it was edible.  I'm pretty sure that's why I got a Blackberry: to make it easy to post pictures to Facebook.  I do it all the time.

I started to post pictures, and people started to ask where the recipes were from, or how things were made.  Finally, one of my friends suggested that I start a blog.  I'm not good about posting, but I figure when I already do this with Facebook, this isn't a huge stretch.

So here, I present to you things I make in my kitchen that are edible, and what I think of those recipes...especially the new ones.  I even have a few ready on the printer for starting out a new year.  I hope you enjoy as much as Hub and I do.